Yelp Update: Free Bulk Upload and Yelp Proceeds with their Lawsuit

Rarely do I have something nice to share about Yelp but this note from Justin Mosebach of YDOP Internet Marketing was a pleasant surprise:

Just found this out for a client yesterday. Client is a health system with a bunch of locations.

Yelp called me back (after I called support) and said that only in the past month have they started allowing free bulk uploads… it used to only be for advertisers (who had so many listings?).

However, the person from Yelp told me that they only do it once for free, so to make sure that we include all of the listings in the spreadsheet that she sent us. She also said that they don’t do any de-duping of listings (that we’d have to manually report the duplicates on Yelp.com).

Just so you don’t think that Yelp is getting all cuddly on us, ArsTechnica is reporting that the Yelp lawsuit over alleged fake reviews to finally move ahead.

A judge in San Diego, California, ruled Tuesday against a local bankruptcy lawyer who had attempted to put a stop to Yelp’s lawsuit against him.

Specifically, Julian McMillan asked the court more than six months ago to issue an anti-SLAPP ruling. A “SLAPP,” or strategic lawsuit against public participation, is a type of lawsuit meant to stifle speech—one where one party employs tactics against a smaller target by drawing out the suit in terms of time and money and intimidating the defendant.

Yelp sued McMillan in August 2013. The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, alleges breach of contract, intentional interference with contract, unfair competition, and false advertising.

Specifically, Yelp believes that McMillan orchestrated fake reviews on the Yelp page for his bankruptcy law business—an accusation he emphatically denies. That larger case, which had been put on hold, will now resume.

The company had offered to settle the case back in 2013 for $5,000, which McMillan refused.

If you recall, McMillan originally sued Yelp in small claims court and Yelp’s lawsuit against McMillan was filed just days before a San Diego superior court judge was supposed to rule on Yelp’s appeal.

Bizarre and tortured. Tit for tat. Yelp is going for the jugular in this one. Hard to see how in the end they don’t look even more thuggish.

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Mike: With regard to the court case and with regard to the problems, glitches, spammy results in google in the your following post:

These web entities have way too much power over smbs. There are no checks. They have court protections, freedom of speech protections, etc. On top of that they have a lot of attorney’s and money and the cases that come up against them are often from much smaller entities with nowhere’s near the financial or personnel resources.

All of it creates a situation that is difficult and often untenable for smb’s….and perversely creates entities that have an almost life and death power over small businesses.

Yelp takes advantage of it…as does google. The losers are often the local small businesses.

I’d like to see the courts change the way they rule on internet issues…but alas…I live in the US…not Europe. Not likely to occur, imho.